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State's Lakes Threatened, So Dnr Acts

For The First Time In More Than 35 Years, Dnr Proposes New Rules For Lake Property Owners.

Wisconsin State Journal :: FRONT :: A1

Monday, August 1, 2005
Ron Seely Wisconsin State Journal

Though Minnesota may have its tally of 10,000 lakes on the state's license plates, Wisconsin is actually wetter. In fact, the most recent data show Wisconsin has 15,057 lakes that cover 1.2 million of the state's 35.7 million acres. The state has 84,474 stream and river miles.

Increasingly, however, we are destroying this watery treasure. We are obliterating shorelines with homes, polluting lakes with runoff and killing fish by using pesticides and removing the brush and dead trees they need to thrive.

In the past 30 years, according to the Department of Natural Resources, the development of the state's shorelines has equaled or surpassed the building that happened during the previous 100 years. The agency estimates that the trend will continue and that all of Wisconsin's remaining privately owned shorelands will be developed by the year 2015.

A local hearing on the proposed rules is scheduled for Thursday in Fitchburg.

"After 35 years, it is time to update this rule," said Todd Ambs, director of the DNR's water division. "The message we're trying to get across in the public hearings is that we're looking at the future of how we protect our shorelines in Wisconsin."

The result of the three-year rewrite is a compromise that both builders and real estate agents as well as environmentalists and lake advocates find fault with and praise at the same time. Both the Wisconsin Realtors Association and the Wisconsin Builders Association criticize the new rules as being too heavy-handed and too complicated.

"We've got some problems with it," said Bill Wenzel, executive director of the Wisconsin Builders Association. "The old rule was 4 1/2 pages long. Now it's 25 pages."

But Ambs and the many others who worked on the proposed rule say the goal of the rewrite was to allow homeowners greater flexibility while increasing the protection of sensitive areas, especially the fringe of land near the water that is so important for filtering pollutants and providing wildlife habitat.

"We believe we have struck that balance correctly," Ambs said. "But the fundamental question for the public at the hearings is, Do you agree with that?'"

Then and now

Those who set out to rewrite the rules faced a monumental task and a far different world than those who wrote the original rule nearly 40 years ago. Just consider the difference between a northern lake home in the 1940s and '50s and such a home today.

Generally, homes on northern lakes in the days before and after World War II were modest cabins or seasonal homes with little or no paved area and a small grass yard. Today, a lake home is more likely to be similar to large year-round homes with expansive, groomed lawns that stretch all the way down to the water. Shorelines today are often cleared of brush and buttressed with stone rip-rap.

Most significantly, more of these homes are crowding lakeshores. Of northern Wisconsin's 12,000 miles of lakeshore frontage, more than 80 percent is privately owned. And, more than likely, it's for sale. Since the 1960s, according to the DNR, about two-thirds of previously undeveloped lakes 10 acres and larger now have some level of development. And 80 percent of Wisconsin lakes larger than 200 acres have been developed since 1965.

But it's not just the loss of shoreline that is the problem. Bigger homes and manicured lawns aren't good for the health of the lakes, studies in the last few years have shown.

For example, two of the most problematic pollutants from modern development are phosphorus and sediment, which spur weed and algae growth and reduce water clarity. Researchers compared phosphorus and sediment pollution from a 1940s-style lake home and a modern home with more pavement and lawn.

Comparing both to an undeveloped shoreline, researchers found the smaller home had no increase in phosphorus-loading while the amount of sediment running into the lake increased by four times.

But a 1990s-style lake home -- with more pavement and the entire lot converted to lawn -- dumped 700 percent more phosphorus into the lake than an undeveloped shoreline and 18 times more sediment.

Other studies have shown harm to fish and wildlife, including birds, from loss of habitat on developed lakes.

Such damage is long-lasting, if not permanent. "Nature isn't making any more of it," said Susan Tesarik, education director for the Wisconsin Lakes Association, of the state's shoreland. "When it's gone, it's gone."

Positive reaction

While the Wisconsin Lakes Association supports the new rule, at least one of its board members thinks the DNR could have been tougher. Sam Lewis, whose family has owned a home on Lake Nancy near Minong in northern Wisconsin for 100 years, said the rules should be stronger. He said he doesn't like provisions, for example, that allow increases in impervious areas -- pavement and rooflines, for example -- on existing homes that wouldn't have been allowed before.

Lewis also worries that the increased complexity of the rules would make them harder to enforce, though DNR officials say counties would play an important role in enforcement.

Despite some concerns, even groups such as the Wisconsin Realtors Association see positive things about the proposal.

Tom Larson, environment director for the association, said one especially positive change would allow the owners of so-called noncomforming structures -- those older buildings, for example, that are closer than 75 feet to the water -- to repair and maintain their buildings. Under the old rules, the value of all repairs and alterations was limited to 50 percent of a structure's equalized value.

"There are some good things," Larson said.

Larson also worries that provisions in the new rule would also lead to more structures being outside the law. Some very minor things in the rules could make a home noncomforming, Larson said. For example, he said, if someone adds on to a home that is closer to the water than 75 feet, they must also remove "accessory structures" within 75 feet of the lake. An accessory structure, Larson said, might include something as innocuous as a flagpole.

But Lewis, with the Wisconsin Lakes Association, said the DNR has done a good job in the proposed new rules of balancing the rights of property owners and the public.

"You can't stop development," Lewis said. "I believe in the rights of property owners, too. But I don't believe people should be allowed to do anything they want to do. I mean, you hear people saying things like, I'm going to put pesticides on my lawn if I darn well please.'"

Public hearing

What: The Department of Natural Resources public hearing on its proposed update to shoreland zoning rules.

When: 4:30 p.m. Thursday

Where: at the Fitchburg Community Center, 5520 Lacy Road, Fitchburg.

Written comments can be e-mailed to toni.herkert@

dnr.state.wi.us or mailed to Toni Herkert, Wisconsin DNR - WT/2, P.O. Box 7921, Madison, WI 53707-7921.